


You're My Obsession, Forever and a Day

by writerkenna



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:20:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26574397
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerkenna/pseuds/writerkenna
Summary: Arthur’s love for Eames is horrible and wonderful at the same time. So, he’s doing something about it.orThe years long journey of Arthur and Eames figuring each other out.
Relationships: Arthur/Eames (Inception)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 60





	1. Chapter 1

Arthur’s love for Eames is horrible and wonderful at the same time. So, he’s doing something about it. 

* * *

Arthur and Eames knew each other for an almost offensive amount of time before anything happened.

They met way back, back when Mal was still the team architect, back when James was only three months into the world, back when their jobs were mostly legal, and when Cobb couldn’t seem to find them a good forger no matter where he looked.

When Cobb brought Eames into the bare storefront they’d rented for that month’s mission, it had come after a string of forgers who had been massively awful. Eames was less than encouraging looking, a black eye that was in between purple and yellow, and clothes that reeked in need of a wash. Arthur stuck his nose up and scanned this new recruit. Even then, under weird second-hand clothes and alcohol stench, Arthur admitted he found Eames quite enticing. But, for that moment, also a risk. He kept his guard up. 

They went through their briefing on the job; two-level dream, first level a hospital and second a nightclub. Arthur needed to research climates, families, medical histories, timelines, etc. He noted this, of course, just as he noted Eames throughout the briefing, searching for any failings that could hinder the rest of them. 

Arthur pressed out the back door of the building after they’ve finished, into a cold rush of northern winter air, and waited for Mal and Cobb to finish whatever they talked about privately after those meetings. With a gust of rank air and a breaking cough, Eames was next to him. Arthur straightened, hands pressed into his pockets, and nodded to his arrival. Eames gave back an almost drunken looking grin and fumbled out a scratched lighter and cigarettes with a foreign name. Arthur’s first impression was again confirmed; the man looked to be seriously cash-strapped. Whether that spoke to his job performance or his own money-handling skills he was unsure, but both made Arthur frown as Eames held a cigarette to him.

“Smoke?” Eames asked, his already lit cigarette bobbing ash onto the ground as he spoke. 

“No. I don’t,” Arthur replied, point blank and a hint rough. Smoking disgusted him for its unglamourous bits; yellow teeth, dirty fingers, hacking coughs. His lips twisted up as Eames shrugged and blew his smoke up and around the both of them. 

“Just letting you know,” Eames, leaned against the railing around the staircase to the street, jacket and shirt pulling up, and Arthur tried not to glance over to the tan strip of skin it revealed, “I do my own research for my forging. Started it already, actually. I’ll let you know if I need your help, but probably won’t. Alright?”

Arthur did _all_ the research, he knew all that there was to be known about the job. It was on the base level of the team’s success. The concept of this Eames, this stranger, having any fact of information he would not, went against all his working history. However, Eames’s confidence, his chapped lips and toothy grin, and his steadiness of body delayed Arthur’s words. Before he could reply, Mal and Cobb were out and moving him along to the car, still in hushed conversation, and Eames was taking his silence as agreement to his terms with a nod. 

As Arthur got into the car, Eames winked at him. He fucking winked. Arthur slammed the car door as he slipped away.

The job went better than any had in awhile. Eames was great, as much as Arthur hated to see it. Whatever secrets Eames had acquired in his private research, it had worked, opening up the mark more and more as he shifted from business partner to sister to lover.

On the last moment of the job, the seconds before the timed kicks and back to reality after the incriminating information had been extracted, Eames was up too close to Arthur. He was in the form of a well structured woman, black bob cropped at his chin, a burgundy lipstick painted on his tight, quick lips, and breasts overflowing from his blazer. 

“So, do I deliver or what?” Eames asked. His voice was a woman’s, sultry sweet and clearly different from his own, but Arthur could hear tones of his smarmy, rough accent trickling in. Slowly, he could feel all of Eames slipping out around the edges of the facade. He didn’t give the question more than a snort and a shrug. Eames had been incredible, though, it was true.

The kick pulled them out of the booming bass of the night club, for the briefest moments to a room with beeping heart rate monitors where Yusuf had stayed, and then finally back into the hotel room where they shared a PASIV with their mark. Arthur’s skin tingled and pulsed the way it always did after a dream sharing, exhilarating like a high, and he was persistently unwilling to admit that any of that had become connected to Eames. 

* * *

At that point in his life, Arthur was actually not working dream share jobs exceedingly often. He only worked alongside Cobb, the one who found their jobs and worked out payment, and Cobb was home with Mal more often, because apparently two kids under three is a much bigger challenge than one and required both parents home more often. They all passed the interim back in Los Angeles and Arthur visited once a month or so, in constant amazement of how the kids were growing. Phillipa had about five new words she could squeak at Arthur each time she saw him and James was starting to smile and laugh, mostly when Cobb would do fake pratfalls for him. 

Arthur stayed in his apartment in San Marino, not really his ‘home’ as he was never at it for long enough to truly settle, but it was as close as he got. He made time to call his parents, which mainly meant his mother, for the first time in four months, and was informed that his cousin Annie was getting married soon, Uncle Mike had had a cancer scare but he was alright, and that his mother would be immensely grateful if he tried to get out to them for Rosh Hashanah that year since she would be hosting some of his father’s important partners from the firm. He did make it back east for Rosh Hashanah and missed the wedding but sent Annie the whole set of fine china she had registered for. He hoped she’d be happy, as he remembered her as bubbly and nothing short of brilliant as a kid. 

In the five months he had in Los Angeles with no work, he thought of Eames entirely too much for someone he’d known for a month. He thought of his messy, muddled but enticing appearance. He thought of his methods; better, quicker, and more alive than other forgers. He thought of how Eames was infuriating and secretive and against every working habit Arthur had established for himself. Eames shouldn’t have worked out, but he did. Arthur was fascinated by that. 

When Cobb and Mal showed up at his apartment after having secured the kids with Mal’s mother and with a new job at the ready-a rich, trophy wife prepared to catch her husband cheating--Cobb suggested that a forger could build the empathy and trust needed. The words came out of Arthur with excitement. 

“Let’s get Eames again.”

* * *

Over the course of the next five months, they did six jobs, five legal and four needing a forger. They worked across the states, jumping from California to Texas to Maine and round and round again. Eames traveled with them even when he wasn’t technically on the job. In hotels and the mansions of rich clients and the stations of police that they were aiding, Eames hung close to Arthur, and Arthur tried his best not to read into it. 

Arthur had a few ground rules for their working relationship. He had let Eames and the oddity of him overpower his judgement the first time around and, even though the job had been a success, he wouldn’t let a part of the job, a part of the world he must learn from top to bottom, be a secret to him again. He made sure Eames was aware of this fact. Eames complied, mostly. 

“You don’t need to know that,” Eames said, was always saying to Arthur whenever he tried to ask after anything more than the most basic facts of Eames’s private research. It drove him insane, same as all of Eames’s other quirks. 

“Yes, I do, Eames. I do fucking need to know,” Arthur gritted, pads of his fingers pressing hard against his note pad which contained blanks that had been needed to be filled for days, “I need to know his opinions on his father and how that affected his involvement in the gang and-” 

“I have a plan for that,” Eames said, low and sure, and Arthur sucked in a tense breath to keep from yelling because he knew that Eames was lying. That he would only say he had a plan to get Arthur off his back, that everything he did for jobs was gut instinct and, in that, utterly fallible. Arthur huffed and fidgeted his pen between his fingers. His tie was too tight, his shirt was starting to itch, and he needed Eames to stop fighting him on this job, on every job. 

In his hotel room in the heart of Dallas later that night, Arthur drank his second rum and coke and checked over the notes he had gotten. Still gap-riddled, but he could start working on what he'd need to have on hand for the mission. His work playlist was streaming off his iPod on the nightstand beside him, his drink and his notepad sat in the bed between his folded legs. He started up a new sheet, categorizing what he already had. Someone knocked on his door and he clicked off his music in the middle of an instrumental of Rosemary Clooney’s _Tenderly_ with a sigh. He was surprised, distrustful, and the slightest bit elated to have found Eames on the other side. They had yet to meet up alone, and the step felt like it should mean something, though Arthur didn’t know what.

“Yes?” he said, trying for flat and aloof, which he thought he did alright at. Eames gave him his easy, side leaning grin. 

“The people above my room are having it off. Loudly. Mind if I wait for them to finish in here?”

Arthur didn’t say yes immediately. Eames’s motivations were always too murky to say yes automatically to anything he asked. Though, his face looked earnest and Arthur was curious enough to take the chance. He nodded and let Eames in through the door and onto the room’s one loveseat. Arthur grabbed his glass and refilled it at the minibar as he settled. 

“I realized, I don’t know what you like to drink,” Arthur said, readying another glass. He had the very smallest of buzzes and was emboldened to discover more of Eames while he had him there. His choice of liquor was a start. 

“Scotch is good. With ice,” Eames told him, and Arthur felt the eyes on his back, eyes shifting up and down him, lingering in certain areas. He nodded and pretended he didn’t notice, a secret and unsure smile flicking on his lips as he scooped ice into an etched crystal glass. 

When he turned, drink in his hand and ready for serving, Arthur took a moment to catalogue Eames that night. Surprisingly, he made Arthur feel underdressed for once, with his still buttoned up paisley top and thigh-clutching brown dress pants. Arthur had made the leap into sweatpants for the night and his showered hair hung unstyled about his face. A rush of self-consciousness flooded him and for the smallest of seconds, he considered running to the bathroom for an adjustment. He shook the thought off as overkill and settled on the edge of the bed, back straight, shoulders set, chin lifted. His parents had both instilled in him the saying of ‘posture makes the man’ and it had stuck with him enough that he tended to lean back on it when he needed an upper hand.

“So,” Arthur started, daring, then, and ready to research Eames by any means necessary, “how did you get into dreamshare?”

“An old friend of mine.” Eames gave him a warning look, one disguised as a charming tilt of his head and teasing eyes, but a warning look nonetheless. Arthur huffed and pressed on, unrelenting. 

“A friend from where?”

“My job before this,” Eames said. It gave Arthur next to nothing, unless the fact that Eames had worked at least two jobs in his life was meant to be a discovery. Arthur’s breath flared in his nostrils and he traced his finger around the rim of the glass, frustrated and unsatisfied with the mysteries he was not being allowed to solve. 

“What’s your game?” he questioned, drilling into Eames with his stare, “You don’t share your information, personal _and_ job-related. You don’t tell any of us how you met Cobb, how you learned forgery, where the hell you’re from, or anything about yourself. Frankly, it’s dangerous for the team.”

“I’m great at what I do. I make sure you guys keep getting jobs. That not enough for you?” Eames grimaced. His rough charm was diminishing into brutish anger. A chill ran down Arthur’s spine and he licked his lips. So damn enticing, even in upset. Arthur’s foot tapped against the floor, giddy with adrenaline from seeing the snarl grow on Eames’s lips, and he let his own lip twitch up into a sneer. 

“Who are you, Mr. Eames? Who the fuck are you?” Arthur’s breath was thick and the rum lit his senses up. He’d been drinking too fast since Eames joined him and his empty stomach was letting it all rush through his head. A pause. Eames studied him, up and down, intense and close. He sipped from his drink again and his lips smacked as he finished. 

“You don’t trust me much, do you?” 

“Not at all, no,” Arthur admitted. Eames pushed out of the loveseat and Arthur twitched with want and fear on top of one another, hoping that Eames’s anger would take him over, that the space between them would become null and void and he would feel the sturdiness of Eames’s core up against himself. 

Eames didn’t pounce on him right then and there. He was, however, close enough to Arthur’s face that he could smell the scotch on his tongue. And that was not nothing. Arthur’s arms pricked with goosebumps. 

“What the fuck is your problem, you bloody tight ass?” Eames hissed, the words steaming onto Arthur’s cheek. 

Arthur was handling a whole deal of problems. That day, primarily, it had been a forger who wouldn’t work with him. It was also that he was anxious that the job might actually go to shit. Mal’s designs were becoming underdeveloped and lazy. She’d been half-assing for months and Arthur was worried but his worry had no place or solution. His problem was that he could lose Cobb and Mal together, so easily, and he had no game plan if he was not a role in their team. Not to mention Yusuf’s sedatives were having them waking up in the middle of dreams in their tests, and the detective they’d partnered up with for the case was a jackass, and a million more swirling problems that were spelling doom. And, of course, the overarching problem of all problems, Arthur’s mind had been frequently and overbearingly occupied by Eames. 

“Back off,” he said as he shoved at Eames with one hand. He needed a second for air. Eames wiped at his brow and took two careful steps away. 

“Sorry,” he spat. His voice burnt with smoldering anger, one that was dying but not dead, and Arthur fiddled with his clothes under the heat of it. He regretted his own harshness, which had been petty and mostly undeserved, but was hesitant to offer any apology. Eames scanned him as he asked, “should I leave?”

Arthur paused, sucked in the air around him- Eames’s cologne, both their sweat, and dying tension- and shook his head. 

“No,” Arthur said, a tight clutch on his glass, “let’s have another drink.” 

Eames chuckled and handed over his glass for Arthur to collect. Arthur let his fingers press against Eames’s as he did and took the small thrill.

“West London,” Arthur heard in a mutter behind his back.

“Hm?” 

“That’s where I’m from, darling. Since you’re so very concerned,” Eames said and Arthur riled at the pet name, “It was a bit of a dodgy neighborhood, but there was the best pub ‘round the corner from my house.”

“Alright,” Arthur said, glad his smile was growing when Eames couldn’t see, “noted.”

* * *

Their final job ended on a drudgy February day in New York. In fitted coats, Arthur with a scarf his Bubbeh bought him and Eames wearing some ridiculous beaten up twee hat, they parted ways. Yusuf stayed in the apartment he rented seasonally in the city, Arthur got into a cab with Mal and Cobb to a flight back to Los Angeles, and Eames departed to parts of Europe he did not disclose. 

Seven months passed where the two of them didn’t see each other. Something around three and a half of them were jobless times where Mal and Cobb needed to be with Phillipa and James. James was into the babbling stage; something that apparently was a marked time in one’s life, and they were trying to potty train Phillipa. Arthur saw them infrequently. Cobb was clever and quick on his feet with excuses why Arthur couldn’t be there. Worry grew deep in him and the feeling that he should have been trying to do more was a usual undercurrent of his thoughts, but he left the Cobb family to their own business. He didn’t push with Cobb, they didn’t force or over analyze each other, and for the most part it worked. 

Arthur enjoyed the sanctity of his own place, spent Sundays splurging on good take-out and wearing sweats that he’d never let anyone see him in, and did his best to appreciate his time off. He bought a few plants for his balcony that had died by the end of his next job, but he took care of them while they lasted. 

He thought of Eames, sometimes as a backtrack and sometimes taking up all of his head. Arthur didn’t miss him. That wasn’t the right phrasing. More like, he was jonesing for the kick that Eames’s energy gave him. He wanted an injection of arousing danger, wanted to be tousled out of his routine, wanted to be angry and excited and fascinated all at once. He was very aware of the fact that Eames’s phone number was in his phone and a click away at any time he wanted it. 

Arthur held out from it until the night before he flew down to LA for the next job, the appeal of his apartment was draining to boredom. The call went for four rings without answer before Arthur could hear Eames’s breath.

“‘Ello?” Eames rasped, either drunk, hungover, or waking up. Arthur startled, the voice tingling inside him, and he ended the call. 

He couldn’t explain, after the fact, what he had wanted from that. There was no job he needed Eames for, no unresolved issues of payment or work-related questions. They had nothing outside of work that bound them. Except, of course, Eames’s residence in Arthur’s mind. 

* * *

Mal was dead. Mal had died. 

Arthur ran it in his head, so much it burned there, so much there were no other thoughts allowed. It was the only way he could keep it settled in his brain. She threw herself out a window. She left her kids, she left her team, and she left Cobb. Mal was dead. 

Arthur packed up half of his apartment and booked a flight with Cobb to Paris a week after they lost her, the point when it became obvious that the authorities were coming for Cobb with warrants. Again, he didn’t push with Cobb, because that wasn’t how they were, and they went through a shuttle ride, customs, and to an airport bar wordlessly. 

“I’m going to the bathroom, alright?” Arthur told Cobb, a loose hand on his shoulder. Cobb nodded with his palms clutched tightly around his phone and shoved up under his chin. Letting out a weighty sigh, Arthur turned from him. 

After the bathroom, Arthur found a deserted area in between terminals and tried calling Eames once again, intent to see it through that time. 

“Eames,” Arthur huffed out the moment he heard the click of an answer.

“Arthur? What’s-”

“Mal’s dead.” It came right out, aggressive and to the point. It felt needed, that he’d somehow transferred it to Eames and wouldn’t have to deal with it.

“Fuck, Art-” 

“She jumped out of a fucking window, and, jesus-fucking shit, uh,” Arthur spurted, “anyways, yeah, Cobb is a fucking suspect for her suicide so we are both leaving the country for a while. Heading to Paris. I’ll let you know if any-”

“Arthur,” Eames said and succeeded in stopping Arthur’s tumble of anxious words. Arthur sucked in a breath, held it, and blew it out before he replied.

“Yeah?”

“Just slow down, love. Slow down, okay?,” Eames asked, and Arthur did. They breathed together across the line, breathed from Oakland International to wherever the fuck Eames was, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

Arthur’s breath hitched into a sob because he hadn’t heard those words yet. To everyone he’d dealt with during this, it had been Cobb’s loss. And it was. It was his loss and Mal’s parents' loss and those poor, wonderful, motherless kids’ loss. But goddamn it, it was some part Arthur’s loss, too. He’d known Mal for as long as he’d known Cobb. They’d scouted him right out of Stanford together. Mal had walked him through his first PASIV experience. She’d told him she was pregnant with Phillipa before she’d even told Cobb. She’d invited him to Christmas every year and, damn it, he went even if he didn’t celebrate. Because he loved her as he loved Cobb, as damn near to family as friends get. She existed in his life for so long, so real and present and meaningful, and suddenly she just _didn’t_. 

“I . . . I-everything is so fucked. I packed up my apartment and-fuck, I’m gonna be here for months. I-I can’t, she’s gone and it-it’s so wrong, it’s wrong. I don’t know . . . I don’t . . .” Arthur rambled then petered off. Eames didn’t speak and Arthur would’ve thought he had hung up if it wasn’t for his deep breaths. Arthur tried to breathe with him again, “what do I do?”

“Just get to Paris, okay?” Eames told him, even and cool for him like Arthur had been doing for Cobb, “All you have to do right now is get on that flight, have yourself a nice drink, and get to Paris. You can figure out the rest once you settle.”

Arthur muttered a ‘yeah’. He had an hour until his flight boarded, but he wished he could have Eames’s soft, low voice for the rest of the night. 

“I’ll try to let you know about jobs once I get in,” Arthur said, his voice still teary but the sobs fading. He rubbed at his wet cheeks with his suit jacket, messing the material. 

“Jesus, don’t worry about fucking jobs. It’s fine,” Eames huffed.

“Can you meet me in Paris?” Arthur begged. The phrase came out sounding so stupidly romantic, like they were some star-crossed couple from a 1940’s noir finally finding each other. But, Arthur did want him in Paris. Whether Eames came to fuck him or hold him or just be in the same general area of Arthur to keep him afloat, it would help. Deep inside of himself, Arthur felt very certainly it would help. 

He heard the click of Eames’s tongue and waited for a response. 

“I’ll try my best to be there, darling,” Eames said, warm but uncertain, “Have a good flight.”

“Okay, uh, thanks. Bye,” Arthur mumbled and ended the call, cheeks burning red. 

The flight was too long. When they landed, Mal’s father had a guest house for them. Cobb stayed in his room all hours of the day, while Arthur wandered around Paris, memorizing buildings for no reason and taking notes of what he saw.

He called Eames three times with no response in his first days there. They never met in Paris. Arthur didn’t ask Eames what happened when they saw each other on the next job, but it all felt like one big missed opportunity. 

* * *

The first job they did after Mal’s death was predictably awful.

The sad fact was that the job was not even complicated. It was illegal, yes, as all their jobs would be from then on, but it was basic; extract the mark’s history of embezzlement for the purposes of blackmail. Truthfully, the job didn’t really require a forger. But, Cobb was ripping at the seams, their new architect meshed poorly, and Arthur wanted the reliability of someone he knew did a good job.

They were so close to getting out of there when everything went upside down. 

Eames had the mark, André, thoroughly distracted, seated in a cafe in his hometown. Eames was his uncle, an old cigar smoking Frenchman with a cane, and his accent showed the weeks it took to perfect. Arthur watched from a balcony of the store across the street with a dual focus on Eames’s calm hold on André’s attention and Cobb’s slow working open of a locked case of receipts of the man’s misdeeds. 

“Cobb, the kick is happening any minute now and Eames can only-”

“I’m trying. Fuck, give me a minute,” Cobb tossed back. He’d been snippy for the whole working process of this job and Arthur tried to put aside how much it annoyed him. It was a stage of grieving, one more productive than utter silence or relentless hammering of drinks and cigarettes. If it jeopardized his work, though, Arthur was less forgiving. 

“Just get it done,” he shot, his tone equalling Cobb’s in gruffness. Cobb huffed out his nose and said nothing more. Arthur pulled at his tie harshly enough to make it dangle loosely and went back to training his eyes on Eames’s work. As he looked, out of a backdoor from a kitchen and weaving through tables with determined eyes, she was there. 

“I . . it . . . Mal,” Arthur breathed. Briefly, in his non-logical, idealistic brain, he thought that her death had been some grand hoax. He thought that it had been dreamed, that he’d forgotten to check his totem and Mal’s suicide, her _betrayal_ , had been an implanted falsehood. But, Arthur was not that naive and his pain had been too ripping to be manufactured. This was not a living Mal. 

“Oh no,” Cobb said as he jerked up and tossed himself against the rails of the balcony. He didn’t seem surprised, albeit immensely frazzled. Arthur stared at him for one searing second and grew furious he hadn’t been told about whatever this was, for professional and personal reasons alike.

“Why is she here?” he demanded. Cobb’s stare remained glued to the projection assuming his wife. 

“Arthur, she’s going to-we need to take her out or else she-she-” 

Arthur turned away from Cobb as he spoke. Arthur was going to strategize and neutralize Mal, after which they would finish this god awful job, and after _that_ he would sit Cobb down and finally push for once. But none of that happened because Mal was at the table already and stabbing Eames in the gut. 

“Fuck!” Arthur blurted involuntarily. The sight of a knife stuck through Eames as he flicked out of the uncle and back into himself, brown leather bomber and bloodsoaked polo, was enough to discombobulate him to the point of breaking. The outburst called the projection of Mal’s attention and she yanked the knife out of Eames while she glared up at them. Arthur’s pulse jolted at Eames’s sputtering cough of blood once the knife was dislodged. 

“Move, move, move. I know how to control this,” Cobb whispered, up against Arthur’s back suddenly and pressing him down stairs. Arthur’s breath was ragged, because there was no controlling, not anymore. The mark was screaming bloody murder and the case was sealed and Eames was dying in any minute. The point of control was long past them. 

Still, Arthur let Cobb force him down the steps. He let him take him into the cafe and try to reason with the demented, unrighted Mal. He let the perfect copy of Mal’s voice get into his ears and drive him crazy because he missed hearing her voice. And, when Cobb truly lost all control of the situation, he let Mal slit his throat. 

He jerked into consciousness next to a snarling Eames and the pain of the slash across his jugular faded into a foggy memory. His anger remained clear and present.

“Fuck,” Arthur growled, slamming his fist against the chair. They had never screwed a job this bad, never once. His fury for Cobb, despite everything, knew no bounds. Firstly though, he checked Eames, hand softening and slipping over his knee. 

“Hey, are you okay?” he muttered, breath heavy. Eames jerked a nod.

“I’ve been killed by projections before. Usually not that violently,” Eames said. Arthur hesitated to remove his hand and Eames turned to look directly at him. His eyes were unclouded and steady, if not narrowed in fury, “I’m okay, Arthur.”

Arthur nodded. He whipped over to Cobb to find him yanking the PASIV tube out of his arm. 

“What the fuck?” he yelled as he jumped up. Cobb wouldn’t look right at him, which only made Arthur’s anger double. 

“She’s been popping up in my subconscious. I’ll get her under control,” he mumbled to the ground. He stood to leave and Arthur’s hand locked around his bicep. 

“Mal just killed me. Mal just fucking slit my throat. You don’t-you have to explain this!” Arthur went rigid as Cobb shook him off. 

“Sorry, I won’t let it happen again, alright?” Cobb sighed. Arthur’s heart was beating up in his throat by that point and he wanted badly to punch at something, possibly Cobb. 

“You goddamn asshole!” Arthur spat. Cobb shot him a nasty glare, like he was the one out of line, and his fists clenched. Eames’s thick fingers landed on his shoulders and tugged him back. 

“You’re right. You won’t ever let that happen again. Not as long as you’re working with me. Figure this shit out, Cobb,” Eames said, all low growls. Cobb gave the smallest of nods, face deadened, and then he was shoving out of there and away from all the people he had just screwed out of a paycheck. Arthur stood in tense stillness and shock. One of Eames’s hands was still on his shoulders, clasping hard into his sweaty vest.

“Do you have a place you’re staying?” Eames asked by Arthur’s ear, which Arthur easily read as _please give us a way to get the fuck out of here and towards alcohol_. He nodded; he wanted that, too. Their client was handling the retrieval of André. They could leave. Arthur didn’t want to have to see Cobb for a while.

“Make sure Cobb doesn’t run,” Arthur said to Yusuf, already stepping towards the door. 

“You think I would?” Yusuf grunted and his anger was stabbing in a way that frightened Arthur. 

“Don’t kill him,” he shot, just to be sure, and left the second Yusuf forced a nod. 

When they got to Arthur’s apartment and Eames stirred them both up something hard but easy to knock back, Arthur asked to not have to talk about the job. He didn’t trust himself not to go ballistic and he loved Cobb too much to sit around bashing him for the next few hours. Eames grunted at the requests but drank his glass in one gulp and conceded. They sat in worked up silence for two drinks worth before Arthur spoke.

“I know I had to uproot my entire life and everything and I’m only here because one of my friends died, but Paris is really a beautiful city. Do you like it here?” Arthur said, because he wanted something positive to talk about and, if he had to leave the country to begin with, at least it was Paris he was in. A beat, and then Eames busted into chesty laughter that shook his body. 

“That is so entirely random,” Eames grinned. It infected Arthur and a smile stretched on his face, too. He smoothed his greased hair and shrugged. 

“It’s also entirely true, so, you know,” Arthur said. When he next looked over to Eames, his laughter was softening and his eyes were on Arthur in a way that made him feel completely seen through. Arthur adjusted all the parts of his three piece suit and waited for whatever it was he felt was imminent, because it was surely something. Eames leaned on his wide palm, licked across the full expanse of his pink lips, and sighed. 

“Can I please fuck you already, darling?”

The question didn’t surprise Arthur. He’d figured, or hoped, or some combination of the both, that they would bed each other eventually. The direct nature of the request startled him a bit, but he should have expected as much of Eames. After a moment, an exhilarated light overcame Arthur and he leaned back in his chair. 

“God. Yes.”

In two large steps, Eames was crouching in front of Arthur’s chair and then, with a flick of his head, Eames’s lips were covering Arthur’s. They were smoky but soft. Arthur was so fucking alive. 

The first time went faster than either of them had intended. It was all anger and overeagerness and pent up everything and they both finished in about ten minutes. 

“Hold on,” Eames said after it was done. They were both quite sweaty for the short time elapsed and Arthur had found a resting spot amongst Eames’s chest hair, “hold on, now. I can do better.”

“Eames,” Arthur grinned, a laugh breezing out of him. He’d put all his energy that remained into the first time, he could hardly imagine summoning up enough to go again. But, as he leveled out his breath and Eames’s fingers toyed around his hip bones, the idea grew on him.

“Well, give me a minute,” Arthur yielded. Eames gave him five and a half, and then his body was again pressed down on Arthur, chest to chest and soft cocks twitching back to life against each other. 

“I am going to . . . take . . . my . . . time . . .” Eames said, slipping words in between wet and lingering presses of this mouth against Arthur’s neck, then collar bone, then the center of his chest, “and you are going to sit back and enjoy it, my dear.”

“Y-yeah, I wanna, yeah, I’d like that,” Arthur worked out. Eames’s hand slipped around Arthur’s member, devastatingly soft and teasing, and Arthur was stuck in the confusing middle of wanting to demand Eames stop fucking with him and adoring the wonderful torture of the slow touches. His mouth settled on letting out a moan caught in his throat. He burrowed his head down into the fluff of his pillow and tried to ‘sit back and enjoy’.

The second time went so slowly Arthur was biting Eames neck red and raw and bucking up to every thrust by the end. Like making up for missed chances and time wasted, they didn’t stop. The third time happened in the shower cleaning up after the second. Arthur’s head had banged against the tile around seven times by the end and he left with fussed hair and a growing bruise sucked onto his chest. The fourth time was in the kitchen after Eames had made Arthur the best cup of coffee he had ever had at two am, because apparently they were not sleeping that night. They got each other off with mouths and hands and fingers on that kitchen floor that Arthur hadn’t cleaned in too long. Arthur rode Eames for the last few minutes of their kitchen sex, his palms pressed against the spot on Eames’s stomach that Mal’s projection had stabbed into. It was untouched, warm, and firm against Arthur’s fingers. They were both there; safe, undamaged, and finally joined and Arthur couldn’t help but revel in the feeling. They mellowed after a fifth. 

As his eyes weighed heavy and Arthur sighed into sleep, he was hit by the distant hope that all the jobs he took from then on could be followed by nights like this.

He woke the next morning with a million questions. Did they talk about it? Did they not? Did Eames reveal himself to Arthur now, any of himself? Would Arthur get to try to solve his mysteries? Were they going to start having sex like that every time they saw each other? Were there other point-men in Eames’s life, other ‘loves’ and ‘darlings’, that got this treatment too? Why didn’t Eames meet him in Paris?

He asked none of these questions, kissed Eames goodbye, and booked a flight back home.

* * *

Arthur called Cobb when he landed in LAX, listening to apologizes and trying to decipher what one was meant to do in a situation like this. His parents had always been relatively bad at emotional business. He had no training to help a friend grieving on scale such as this. He hoped Cobb had someone better to go to, though Yusuf was less than warm and bubbly and Eames . . . well, Arthur didn’t think Cobb would go to Eames. 

Once Arthur was in the city, he went from taxi to apartment to his bed. He slept for nine odd hours, knocking out at four pm which felt like one am. He didn’t dream anymore, but he woke intermittently feeling as though he was free falling, which always happened to him after long flights. 

He allowed himself six weeks away from work before he got his tickets back to Paris. He ate take-out dinners alone on his couch while he watched crime procedurals and took to running through Lacy Park until his lungs lit on fire. For the first time in a long time, Arthur wished he had taken the time to make actual friends in the city. 

* * *

Arthur had been letting Eames fuck him regularly once he returned and had resigned himself to the fact that this fucking was probably going nowhere emotional fulfilling. They met at one of their places they were renting. They tackled each other in hallways, shoved tongues in each other’s mouth in the middle of talking, and pulled together in unfamiliar beds. They fucked and talked about topics that never concerned the matter of their lives and let those talks turn into arguments and, if they had the energy and the day brought them to it, they cycled through that routine again and again until they were sore. In little bits and with questions that he had to hype himself up before asking, Arthur endeavored to discover more of Eames. 

“Will you tell me your first name?” Arthur asked, rough, cheap, sheets bunched around them and the lit up skyline of Bucharest outside the bay window. The air was brisk, seeping in through bad insulation, they had got done with a job that Arthur could admit they did incredible at, and, with invigorated confidence, he felt he was owed an answer. Eames just smirked and shook his head. Arthur rolled his eyes, “Fuck, I mean, you’re not _just_ Eames, are you?”

“Why do you need to know my first name? Isn’t moaning out ‘Eames’ erotic enough?” Eames said, his eyes on the ceiling, and Arthur restrained himself from laughing, both out of ridiculousness and anger. 

“This would not be an issue for a normal person,” he muttered. 

“Oh come on, pet. We are hardly normal. Give us some credit,” Eames said. He rolled himself onto his side and dug his head into the crevice of Arthur’s neck, sucking and biting on the already red and raw spots. Arthur’s breath caught at the sensitivity for a second before he tugged away with a groan. 

“Tell me,” he demanded with his tough guy work voice. Eames, his head still anchoring down Arthur’s shoulder, was silent. A full minute and a hefty sigh later, he answered. 

“Edgar.” The name came out as hot, hissed breath against Arthur’s skin. 

“Edgar Eames? Really?” Arthur confirmed, because that was just too damn cheeky to be real. Eames rose his head up enough to snarl at him, a real, true nasty snarl, and Arthur’s smirk dissipated. 

“Yes,” Eames pressed through his teeth, “My dad had a thing for alliteration. He was an Edmund. Named my brother Elliot.” 

Arthur’s curiosity spiked and follow-ups came to him; questions about if Eames still talked to any of these people, where Elliot and Edmund were in this world, and why it had taken so much just to get to ‘Edgar’. He didn’t ask those questions, that he knew clearer than anything Eames wouldn’t answer. 

“Who were you before this?” Arthur asked instead. His stare remained persistently forward and he did everything he could to not let Eames feel how nervous his breaths were. Another pause stretched out between them. Eventually, he clicked his tongue and Arthur’s eyes flicked down to him to find Eames with a furrowed brow and a million mile stare.

“Okay, er, well. What do you want to know?” Eames said. Arthur flushed a bit, because he hardly knew what he’d meant, actually. He readjusted himself and Eames left his shoulder to sit up next to him. 

“I guess . . . I guess you could tell me about your old job first.” Arthur checked Eames’s reaction, finding it to be a less than pleased looking pull of his lips. He pushed out a closed-mouth chuckle.

“Yes. That,” Eames sighed. Arthur didn’t speak as Eames gathered his words, displeasure stirring on his face, “I was a dutiful member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces, thank you very much. From right out of secondary school to . . . six years ago, now, I think? Infantry first, for about a year or two, then they moved me to the Special Air Service, which was all covert, undercover business. Best training I could have done, really, for forging. Amazing training. Problem is, there’s no control and no choice in a situation like that. Very easy to be taken advantage of. I left after another ex-agent showed me PASIV.”

Arthur nodded, slow and processing. It was leaps and bounds more than he was expecting, even if he still had his questions.

Military, he thought over, made sense and didn’t. He could see it, in Eames's quick action under pressure and his comfort with firearms like they were just another limb of his, but mostly it didn’t line up. Eames seemed way too loose and risky and unsettled to fall in rank. Though, that was likely why he’d left. 

“And you?” Eames said to Arthur, and Arthur stilled the cogs of working thoughts. 

“Huh?”

“Who were _you_ before all your point-manning? I think I should be able to ask that back.”

“Yeah,” Arthur said, his tongue flicking over his lips in a jittery fit of nerves, for his story was much less spy thriller and much more standard upper class. It made him feel entirely not up to snuff to be sharing a bed with Eames, the once British secret agent and current man of mystery, “yeah, yeah. Okay, so, I’m from New York, originally. I think I’ve mentioned that. I did the prep school thing, then Stanford for Computer Science. I . . . I got my Masters in Business after and-oh God, what?”

Eames was laughing, the bastard. And Arthur had never felt less impressive in his life.

“God, of course you were an academic. Of course you were. Just look at you,” Eames grinned. Arthur did look at himself. He was naked in a rented bed with a man who had at least ten tattoos next to him. He didn’t think it was an obvious fact, though Eames couldn’t stop smiling at him like it was. 

“Shut up, you ass,” Arthur hissed, jabbing an elbow into a part of Eames’s gut he knew to be tender. Eames tossed his head back in mock pain before supporting himself on his elbows and bringing his face within shared-breath distance of Arthur. 

“I want to hear all your Ivy League stories one day, alright? I can’t begin to imagine what you got up to in your dorms, you little perv,” Eames purred at him. Arthur went to call him out for that perv comment as pot calling the kettle black but Eames bounded up first into a kiss that felt like they’d be on each other and in each other again in minutes. 

Once Eames had found the condom buried in his luggage and let Arthur roll it down his shaft, Eames pressed into him, one burly hand splayed on his hip bone and the other bracing on his shoulder. They came like that, Arthur messing the sheets in a lazy sputter and the two of them back to chest. They fell asleep like that, too, just Arthur, the academic, and Edgar (though Arthur would stick to Eames), ex-spy. 

* * *

On the next job after that, in a hotel in Valencia, Spain, where it was nosy all hours of the night, Arthur was listening to his sleep playlist and giving his all to falling asleep despite the drunken idiots chattering under his window. 

The team traveled around more for work then. Arthur, due both to his line of work and the uncountable summers and winters of his youth being shuttled around the globe, had never had issues with sleeping in beds that weren’t his own. But, with time zones that shifted with every move and new currencies and languages and maps to read, his internal equilibrium was shot. Sleep was never not a struggle and most nights consisted of hours of soft thrumming of music in his headphones and the endless delirium that was a restless night. 

_La Vie En Rose_ trickled to a close and Arthur grunted as he flung himself over onto his side. He’d reached half-sleep, a place that was foggy but gave no relief from exhaustion, when he heard the clicking open of his door. 

Arthur’s sleep fuzz dulled his reaction time momentarily before he was figuring out that, since his gun was hidden in the closet, he could move himself in a matter of seconds around the figure that moved closer in the dark, grab it, and use the grip to slam against their head. But then, he was jolting up as the possible assailant halted next to the bed and Arthur could make no moves. He thrashed his arms as the figure’s hand wrapped around his bicep. 

“Arthur,” a voice whispered over his thick breathing, “Shh, shh, love, it’s me.”

Arthur stilled and took a deep breath. The person smelled of rich sweat, tobacco, and heavily applied cologne. Arthur flicked on the dim nightstand light and blinked against the brightness. 

“Eames? How’d you-”

“You gave me a copy of your room key yesterday,” Eames told him and Arthur nodded, sort of remembering. Eames’s knee lifted to press down on the bed and Arthur shifted over to let him stretch himself across the sheets. Wordlessly, Eames’s fingers came to toy with the waistband of Arthur’s briefs as he leaned his lips towards Arthur’s neck. 

With one headphone still hanging in his left ear and playing _Come Softly_ _to Me_ just audibly, Eames’s searing kisses across Arthur’s collar and bare chest all cast in the gentle light of the lamp seemed to be half dream. Arthur almost reached over to his nightstand drawer to pull out his totem. To give it one toss and be told that this, Eames in his bed under the cover of dark, this beautiful gust of a person, was a creation of his subconscious. He thought back, trying to remember how they got here like Mal taught him, and he couldn’t. If this moment was a dream, he decided not to say anything. 

As the lines _“I need, need you so much, wanna feel your warm touch_ ” soundtracked them, Arthur raised his hips up so Eames could slip his underwear off him. His cock pulsed as he watched Eames work himself and Arthur at the same time, his hands syncing up with each other’s quick tugs.

“Needed this today,” Eames murmured. 

“Mmmhmm,” Arthur sighed as he sparked under Eames’s touch and felt like a spectator to the whole encounter, observing all of Eames’s tricks and methods in quiet awe. Eames brought his head down slow and steady to the tip of Arthur’s member, their eyes locked as he did, and flicked his tongue against it. He smirked as Arthur hissed and dipped down to cover his shaft with his mouth. Arthur gasped in a breath, shut his eyes, and thought only of the feeling of Eames’s tongue for the next five minutes. 

He took Eames in his hand after he finished and pulled him to coming in a few quick jerks. After, Arthur allowed himself to hold Eames stubbly mess of a jaw between his two hands and give him a kiss, full of want. He was in love with him, he realized, and felt that it was not really a realization at all. 

“Stay,” Arthur half-moaned, meaning more than that night, meaning long-term, meaning stop taking jobs where they wouldn’t be working together, meaning stop going months without speaking at all, meaning stay with Arthur in a real, material way. Eames looked him over for a moment and released a heavy breath, before he mumbled ‘right then, darling’ and reclined back into the bed, arm secure around Arthur’s waist. Arthur smiled, small and delicate, and switched off the lamp. 

* * *

The Fischer job was likely one of the most high risk, high reward endeavors he had ever managed. And, coming out of it, waking up on a landing plane, Arthur was riding a wave of exhilaration that made his blood pump with more heat and his skin tingle with a new, unnamable electricity. His wide open eyes turned over to the seat across him where Eames sat, and everything around him burned bright white, as unreal as the dream. 

_Insane,_ Eames mouthed, stretching the word long. Arthur nodded, a grin he was unable to keep off his face growing. Insane, so amazingly, terrifyingly, insane. 

They touched down at LAX. Arthur was mostly sure that Eames had a connecting flight to somewhere else, possibly back to the poker tables in Mombasa. There could have been another gap of months between them before they met again. But, they were back in the familiarity of the US, Cobb looked about to cry, rosy cheeks and shaky breaths, as he waited for Mal’s father, and, if things went according to plan, Arthur was going to be eating dinner at the Cobb residence, seeing Phillipa and James for the first time in two years, by the end of the week. Maybe it was for all that, and for the fact that his share of the job was enough to live off for years, that Arthur kissed Eames for the first time publicly in baggage claim.

Their lips slipped into each other like matching cogs and Arthur let tendrils of lingering adrenaline pour from himself and into Eames. He kept it modest enough for the airport, barely a trace of tongue, one hand on Eames’s cheek and the other secured by his side. But, God, he made sure Eames knew he meant it.

“Well, then,” Eames said as Arthur pulled back. His plump lips shone pink from the attention. Arthur smirked, reached a hand up to flatten down his hair, and tossed his luggage off the belt in one swift motion. 

“Congratulations on a job well done,” Arthur told him, a practiced and perfected suaveness draping his words. He lets his breath sit full in his chest as Eames tugged his bottom lip between his teeth. 

“Same to you. You’re extremely brilliant under pressure, albeit quite too rigid,” he said. Arthur rolled his eyes and loved even the dig. That’s how he knew he was too deep; he adored even insults when they came in the packaging of Eames’s voice. 

“I have to catch a taxi. I’ll see you soon, Edgar,” Arthur jabbed right back. He took a second to delight in the glare Eames gave him before he left baggage claim for the waiting taxis out front, hoping with all his being that his words would ring true, that he would see Eames again soon. 

In his real bed, a bed he could sleep in, in a timezone that would click in a few days, Arthur closed his eyes feeling grateful for good change and wanting even more. 

* * *

Nothing ever really changes. Arthur should have accepted that. 

Actually, some things can change back to their previous states. His jobs after the inception could go back to run of the mill danger rather than the life or death kind. Cobb could go back to being a dad, back to whatever person he had been before dream sharing had consumed him, and say goodbye to the work, at least until Phillipa started middle school. He could shift back into a man that Arthur still loved but had trouble relating with, not in the same way he always had, not in clipped conversations in the height of risk. And, Arthur could lose his hope on fulfillment easy as that and revert to being a cheap fuck again. Regression and rewinding was entirely possible; true change was not. 

Arthur worked in Europe occasionally after the Fischer job, though he tended towards legal work in America, low risk but also uninteresting. He hadn’t realized how much his old team had been a safety net. Losing Mal had shaken up his work for months and losing Cobb, who was by far his closest partner, left him feeling untethered and defenseless in anything even touching on intense. It was all such bland and flavorless occupation, the legal and simple work, but it kept him feeling level. He tried to call in Ariadne when his clients needed an architect and she made the work a bit more exciting. 

Arthur did still let himself dabble in the illegal when he’d make his way out to Europe, make his way out to Eames. Eames seemed to give courting endangerment its old appeal and, well, change occurring with them or not, Arthur craved their nights together. 

They were working in London; Ariadne as architect and Yusuf making their compounds, and Arthur was coming home to Eames’s most permanent flat, the oddly personal nature of this rattling him up inside, after another meeting with their client over payment. Cobb used to figure that business out. Arthur missed that. He swung open the door and tossed himself back against it with a huff. 

“Rough day, pet?” Eames asked from the kitchen, which was full of hot, beef and garlic smelling air. Eames had been cooking for Arthur during the month they’d been staying together and cooking was very much not a skill Arthur would have expected him to have. But, the kitchen was full of pots and pans and a multitude of Cuisinart tools and the dining table was occupied by a new, fragrant meal every night. 

Arthur simply grunted as he unraveled from his coat and scarves. He had spite for London winter weather. He had moved to California from Rochester for a reason, to escape the crippling cold. He’d remember not to take jobs in the city at this time of year anymore. 

“Ericson’s trying to stiff us,” Arthur mumbled after he’d stripped down to just a dress shirt and thick, cotton pants and gotten a beer from the fridge. 

“Fucking wanker,” Eames said, and flipped the steaks as he did, “did you bring him around?”

“Mostly. I don’t know. He’s so evasive. I think I’ll have to send you,” Arthur said. Eames smirked proudly at him over his shoulder. 

“You bet you will. I’ll set him right for us.”

Arthur nodded in a post-meeting lethargy. He sipped at his beer, one that Eames had bought and he only liked well enough, and tried his best to catalogue all the steps Eames took in bringing the steak and green beans to fruition. The scene was discordant enough from what he knew of the two of them that Arthur reached into his pocket and, as he did every night for the past two weeks, turned his totem over and over. He checked. It landed on three. It remained reality. He didn’t know what the hell he was meant to think of that, but he didn’t let it ebb into hope. 

On mismatched plates on top of a clearly antique wooden table, they ate together. 

“Shit,” Arthur hummed, as he usually did at Eames cooking. Eames smiled.

“My life’s work is to get you cursing for me by any means necessary,” he said and Arthur shook his head, continuing to get buttery bites of steak on his fork as quick as he could. 

“You know,” Arthur began, meal half done already, “I could cook, too. Some of the nights.” 

Eames laughed lowly as he set his fork down. Arthur’s brow furrowed into an angry knot. 

“No, no. I’m sure you’re a wretched cook,” Eames grinned out, light and cheery as if he didn’t insult Arthur to his face. Arthur puffed a large breath out his nose. 

“Excuse me? I’ve never cooked for you!” 

“Ah, but, see, darling, cooking requires imagination. It’s simply not your forte. I bet you follow recipes to the letter. I’m certain of it. No experimentation,” Eames elaborated and Arthur shifted up in his seat, nails digging into wood, because he was already in a bad mood and feeling too many things about Eames, not advisable to be pushed.

“Recipes are meant to be followed, you absolute ass. They are written to produce a good end product!”

Eames bent with laughter. Arthur’s cheeks sprung red and he considered throwing a plate as Eames spoke. 

“See? You are a recipe follower. I know you so well.”

“You don’t know me,” Arthur spat, quick and irritated before he thought, “You really don’t. I don’t know you and you don’t know me.”

The air in the room shifted once the words were said and Eames sat straighter, with a rigid flat mouth and squared shoulders. 

“I’m sorry, Arthur. I didn’t mean to offend,” Eames said, monotone and too polite for him, and Arthur regretted, deeply. He liked the teasing, usually, as much as he fought it. He liked their games. But he’d been living with Eames for too long, long enough it felt like it could be like that forever; dinner and questions about each other’s day, sex in beds they owned and shared appliances. The contradiction of those feelings with what they actually were to one another was enough to snap anyone, Arthur thought. And he wanted to suck the words back in at the same time he was glad to have them out, to level them out of whatever role Eames was forging. 

Arthur stood from the table, his plate in his hands, and held in a breath. 

“Sorry. It’s fine. Thank you for dinner,” he told Eames on the exhale, “I have work to do in my room.” 

He went to the bed he rarely ended up sleeping in and pounded notes away in the word document he had running for the case. At the point of the night Arthur started considering sleep, his door creaked open and Eames stood on the edge of in and out of the room. 

“Come in,” Arthur mumbled with his face downcast, long past anger and deep in embarrassment. 

“You still bugged off at me?” Eames asked.

“Are you?” Arthur issued right back. 

“No. Can’t say I ever was,” Eames stepped in closer, so that he and Arthur shared the same air, “I have some other feelings you could help me address, if you’d like.”

Arthur sighed and his chest fell. Sex. The primary objective of them. Of course. He brought Eames’s fingers to his mouth and tugged down as he kissed the knuckles, wanting it then despite himself. He knew he had an addiction, truthfully, but he wasn’t quite ready to seek help. Eames's face filled with a nasty grin and he lowered to his knees beside Arthur’s bed. He started to tug open the buttons of Arthur’s shirt and a press of hot lips followed each undoing. Arthur watched him as he did, breath growing less than steady.

“Do you want me or not?” he huffed. Eames smirked and bit small marks across Arthur’s collarbone. 

“Oh, yes, darling, yes. Do you want me to show you how much?” Eames purred. Arthur frowned and pressed Eames away from him. 

“I can’t-not sex, Eames,” he sighed, “What’s going on with us?”

Eames stared up at him, eyes big for a moment then narrowed as he deciphered Arthur. Arthur waited, heavy droop to his shoulders and displeasure sitting in the lines of his face. 

“I’m not sure I . . . what are you asking me here, love?”

“Stop with the pet names, okay? For now, just stop,” Arthur snarled and Eames leaned further back on his haunches, “do you want to be with me or not?”

“I like what we have. We don’t have to complicate it,” Eames responded. Arthur's teeth tightened against each other and he clenched and unclenched his fists. They did, though, was the problem. They did because Arthur was going crazy and couldn’t trust his own mind and damn it, he deserved some sort of explanation. He deserved more than Eames’s charming, vague, indefinite attitude towards them, had earned it from years of this exchange between them. 

“No,” he said, gruff and unyielding, “no, that’s not what I asked.”

“I don’t know what you want,” Eames said with a shrug. Arthur shoved off the bed and moved himself to the window around Eames, scrubbing his hand in rough pulls across his face.

“Fuck, Eames! You’re impossible!”

Arthur hovered by the window and tried to measure the worth of his outburst. His faith in change had been abolished for a while and he doubted Eames would be the one to restore it. He had no delusions on affecting change, really, so he was unsure what the actual goal was. Maybe it was aimless, maybe he couldn’t stop it coming out of him. 

Eames approached him, laying a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur moved quickly into defense. He grabbed the hand around the wrist and bent it off him. Eames yanked the hand back and shook it out. 

“Jesus, you’re insane!” Eames yelped. Arthur grimaced. 

“We wanna talk about insane? You’re goddamn insane,” Arthur pushed forward and shoved Eames square in the chest, moving him back a few paces, “You’re a loudmouthed, fucked-up, wishy-washy, insane person. You’re a disaster.”

Eames stared back at him, hands made into fists but not moving, and his top lip pulled up into a snarl. Arthur stayed rigid, unafraid and unthinking.

“You wanna be mean, huh? You wanna treat me like shit? That’s what you really want?” Eames asked, obviously meaning to falter Arthur. Arthur winced in a breath and changed nothing. 

“Maybe it is. Yeah.” Arthur pushed hard against Eames again, solid contact and force to his shoulders. Eames’s legs slammed into the chair behind him and he bit down on his lip for a moment before he bounced back at Arthur. He tossed his body weight into the bulk of Arthur and let him crash against the window. 

They allowed themselves a few more minutes of playing at this and knocked down decor and lamps alike to the floor. Arthur kept sparking, kept pushing, and was invigorated and frustrated and terrified and couldn’t stop himself. Huffy and red, Arthur pinned Eames’s wrists to the wall. He was aware in some part of himself that Eames was letting him do so, because Eames was muscled and former-military, he could take Arthur down easy, and hesitated to fight more. Instead, he locked his eyes on Eames’s, ocean blue that Arthur had never noticed were also flecked with deep greens and turquoises. Arthur’s shoulders collapsed. 

“Why didn’t you meet me in Paris?” Arthur whispered, working against angry drips of tears because he absolutely couldn’t cry. That would be the worst thing that could have happened. Eames sucked in his lips and let his eyes grow heavy before he spoke. 

“I . . . Jesus, I don’t know. I wanted to. Fuck, I did. But I’ve never been good with grieving people. I was worried I’d make it worse. I mean, even when my father . . .” Eames halted himself and shook his head before he gave Arthur any truths of his life, “I wasn’t prepared to come. I’m sorry.” 

Arthur released Eames’s shoulders and took a step back. He had been correct. They didn’t know each other, not really. 

“You should have met me,” he muttered. Eames sighed and looked to the ground as he mumbled another apology. 

“I can’t do this,” Arthur admitted, finally at a limit. Eames’s head flicked up.

“I don't-”

“It means I can’t keep playing games with you. That I won’t let you fuck me and not care and I won’t be your kept man, or whatever. It means I’m done with this,” Arthur said. 

“Darling,” Eames eased, too put together, and Arthur made the active choice not to fall for it. 

“Please go.”

And Eames did. His face fell and he pressed out of the room without hesitation, slamming the door behind him. And against himself, Arthur’s chest squeezed painfully and he crumbled, because he had been hoping for at least some fight, some argument and denials and final searing kisses. He hadn’t thought that Eames would release him that easy. 

Eames made the wise choice of avoiding Arthur at work the next day. Arthur’s anger from the night before stayed persistent and lashed out at the rest of the team, in snippy comments and gruff orders to everyone, to the point that Yusuf was yelling that Arthur was a ‘fucking shithead’ by lunch. His patience had been fried and every glance at Eames from the corner of his vision, glimpses of a gaudy, cheap button-up and a poor shave that couldn’t be ignored, pushed him further to snapping at someone new.

“Do you need a break?” Ariadne asked eventually, sweet even though Arthur had been going through the list of fallacies in her dreamscape design. He could tell she was trying to ease him away from the team, who could only take so much of him. Arthur scanned the room, Yusuf glaring at him and the extractor for the job, Lana, wouldn’t even make eye contact with him. Arthur sighed and nodded. 

“Yeah, uh, yes. That sounds good,” he mumbled. Ariadne gave him a tight smile and walked with him to the door. 

They ended up in a pub a few blocks over, one with a husband and wife as owners and only four beers on tap. It was only three pm, but Ariadne ordered them both dark ales and Arthur drank it quickly than he should. He bought them orders of shepherd’s pie to balance it out. 

“I love places like this,” Ariadne said softly, pushing at her peas and gravy, “So cozy for a big city.”

“Yeah. It’s cute,” Arthur replied, mostly not paying attention. He was on his second beer and trying to get food in his stomach, though Eames had spoiled him with good food and the dish lacked much spice. 

“I think I could move here,” Ariadne sighed, a warmth under her smile. Arthur turned his head up and towards her.

“Really?”

“Yeah. I grew up in this little Nebraska town, just me and my mom and my sister. The type with a population of a thousand and that barely got a Target last year, but we had bars like this. London feels sort of, I don’t know, homey. Something I could handle.”

“I think you’d fit right in here,” Arthur said earnestly. He studied Ariadne, really took her in for the first time, and realized she was a very beautiful woman, with her large, unassuming brown eyes and soft, milk white complexion. Outside of that, she was honest. Arthur could read her, could ask her questions and get real answers, could know her heart if he tried to. She was safe like that, sweet and curious and still so bright-eyed about the world. 

“Thanks,” Ariadne smiled, before she sighed and tilted her head to look up at him, “You’re okay, right? At work you seemed . . . you were off. Did something happen?”

Arthur swallowed and turned his gaze forward. It spoke to how much easily she could endear herself to someone that he considered telling her some of what had happened last night. He thought better of it, for it felt way too pathetic to get drunk and whine about Eames and he wouldn’t create inter-team drama just a week before they got their mark. He forced a smile at her.

“No. Just not sleeping well lately,” he said. Ariadne eyed before she accepted it and, though he could tell that he had not convinced her of anything, she dropped the subject. 

Arthur continued to drink too heavily for the time of the day as he let Ariadne talk. She took to the opportunity well and spilled to him more openly that she should in their profession. He learned of her time on her high school’s chess team and why she chose her totem, of how and when her dad left her family, of her two nieces she sent trinkets from wherever she took her jobs, of college and odd dormmates and late nights in Paris getting too drunk. She unfolded in front of him, into a complete being Arthur was glad to know. 

Three beers later, Ariadne helped Arthur gain enough balance to make their way out of the pub and into the biting cold Arthur hated. Ariadne was trying to hail them a cab. Arthur was staring at her, at the soft curves of her side profile and, despite the fact that the last time he was with a woman was during undergrad, thought about how he could kiss her, then and there. He could kiss her and it would be so easy with her. She would be such a relief. So he did, grabbing a section of her coat and tugging her to be pressed to him. 

The kiss was so painfully sparkless it was like kissing a sibling and they both recoiled back with sour looks. Ariadne started mumbling about how she was flattered but she was seeing this girl she met back when they were in Amsterdam last month and she would really like to see how that would go and she hoped this hadn’t ruined their friendship. Arthur shook his head and shifted the blame back on himself, silently grateful for her rejection. She still offered her couch despite his awful pass at her since he was stumbling drunk and they got in the next cab they saw. The kiss went unmentioned, staunchly so. 

Arthur, as he laid under the Harry Potter themed blanket Ariadne had given him from her personal collection, knew that Ariadne was not at all what he wanted. 


	2. Chapter 2

Eames was missing. 

No, that wasn’t right, actually. Arthur had the perfect idea of where he was. He was most likely being kept in some moldy basement of the mob their mark worked with. And Arthur was intent to return Eames to him. 

Eames disappeared three days after their fight, his infiltration of the mob den going sideways in a manner Arthur couldn’t imagine, and it promptly put everything into perspective. The concept of losing Eames, in all ways, in a grand and permanent sense, had startled Arthur into realizing two facts: that he would do just about anything for Eames, even if they weren’t together, and that he was done doing any illegal jobs.

The first thing Arthur did was call Cobb. He had no connections built in London to help him in a situation like this and, with his only training in combat and retrieval in the dreamscape, he was woefully unprepared to get Eames back on his own. It was after Cobb’s fourth no that Arthur went frantically desperate. 

“Dom, Dom, _please_. I-I have no idea what I’m doing and they’re going to kill him if I don’t-fuck! Please, I need help. I know that this risks everything for you, but-” Arthur paused, took in a gulp of air. He was cognizant of what he was asking of Cobb. He knew this risked not only them, but the sanctity of Phillipa and James lives, too. It was asking too much, Arthur knew, but his need for Eames was like wildfire, consuming with an endless rage until he could get him back.

“Dom. I’m in love with him.”

The words lingered with an unshakeable after taste, not bad but not entirely welcome either. Cobb sighed lowly on the other line and Arthur knew he understood this kind of desperation dearly. 

“Jesus. I . . . I’ll get a flight soon. Don’t expect me for two days, at least. Get me every single detail on the people that took him.” 

“Thank you,” Arthur said and a rush of relief surged through his words, unbelievable relief, “Dom, fuck, thank you.”

Cobb mumbled something about ‘never doing this again’ before he shot a goodbye and hung up. 

Arthur picked him up from the airport two and half days later. They spent the whole night awake alongside Arthur’s research and cups of strong coffee. Arthur’s hands shook from caffeine and deep, dripping dread. 

The group that made away with Eames had been a staple in London since the 70’s, Irish imports with a history of robbery, trafficking, the occasional murder, and bribery of anyone who could possibly be corrupted in a government office. They were old, practiced, and comfortable with killing anyone who posed threat to them. Arthur, looking back on it, should have never taken the job. He should have scoffed in the face of his client, the head of a newer, lesser rival gang who wasn’t even paying them that much, and searched for another month. Arthur should have trusted his own caution, should have dragged him and Eames out of illegal work together because no thrill was worth this. These people could kill Eames with no remorse. And Arthur had no clue what he’d do then. 

From the bribing and intimidation of the right individuals, Arthur was able to secure the mob’s current base; a basement under a billiards club in Clerkenwell. He and Cobb took the train to meet Yusuf in Brussels and buy a stock of sedative laced darts. Arthur found the designs of the building online, which they marked up, Cobb’s fast, slanted handwriting identifying each possible storage location of Eames. Their final stop was an arms dealer in an abandoned shopping center just outside the city. He cut them a crap deal that could have been bargained down, but Arthur paid it in full without a word, because he didn’t want to deal in danger anymore than he had to, and every second he wasted was a second against Eames’s survival. After three days of planning, six whole days of Eames being gone, they moved in. 

“You might have to kill people.” 

Arthur stilled near the billiards club entrance, Cobb’s words sending chills down through the bottom of him. He shoved his hands down into his pockets and shivered as the gun he holstered against his calf moved with it. 

He pressed away everything that stirred in his gut. He had already been sure that was what the job would entail from the description alone. He’d do it for Eames. 

“I know,” he replied, teeth gritted. 

They came into the club, Arthur before Cobb. Arthur ordered a gin and tonic, sipping just enough to look casual. Cobb took the billiards tables with a charming smirk and a skill at the game that fluctuated to match the opponents he got, not too good and not too bad. 

Over half an hour passed before they moved. Arthur was antsy, his breath going unlevel for brief moments, but he didn’t act. Even outside dream sharing, he knew his role. Cobb acted and he reacted from that. If Cobb was still, so was he. 

Finally, Cobb leaned up from a game, laid his cue stick across the far left side of the table, and offered a good game to his competitors. Arthur stood, paying his tab and making a motion towards the bathroom. 

The entrance to the basement was hidden in the architecture behind a door that blended with the wall surrounding it. It was manned by one burly, shaved-head man who looked nasty and bored. Cobb hit him with one of the darts and he slid down the wall in unconsciousness before his hand could take hold of his radio. Cobb flicked his chin and Arthur sucked in a breath to hold before he went forward. He put all his attention on quite steps down the stairs, on balancing weight intentionally between his heels and toes. Cobb paused them and his hand landed heartily in the center of Arthur’s thrumming chest.

“I’ll deal with them,” Cobb whispered, and Arthur finally tracked the two guards, scrawnier than the first, patrolling the lower front room. Cobb worked his dart gun out from his back holster, packed in quick, precise moves, and gunned them down before they ran on. 

Three more people were left either dead or injured following that; one Cobb snapped the neck of, one Cobb slammed down heavy with the barrel of his dart gun for his radio, and the final one Arthur shot himself, center of the chest, large red splatter, killing blow. Cobb’s ease was helpful and unsettling, too comfortable with the return to trained violence. Arthur’s fingers, dirtied and blood speckled, fit unsurely around the trigger of his gun in a way they never had before. Cobb scared him. The situation scared him. 

Arthur used his gun five more times before they got to the room they had circled on their designs for where Eames was most likely being kept. He tried to not think about it, or about the blood on his shirt. The door that Eames could be seemed to shake in the frames and the great throb of his head muddled into a stream of _oh god, please let him be alive_. 

“Back up,” Cobb grunted and Arthur did automatically. Cobb’s arm raised, gun ready. With a clang of metal slamming metal, the lock fell away. They both froze for a moment before there was pick up of sound from down the hallway. Cobb turned to it, muttering a curse under his breath, before he whipped back to Arthur. 

“See if he’s in there. I’ll handle this,” he rushed. Arthur lurched to Cobb without thought, maybe to stop him. He kept Cobb safe. He was the pointman. He was fucking terrified but the needed to the do his job. 

“No. Stay,” Cobb said, the words coming up from deep in him, guttural. And, despite himself, Arthur fell back. Cobb sprinted away and Arthur was left with nothing to do but what Cobb said; stay. He glanced over. The door was ready for him to open.

Arthur sucked in a breath. He lifted his gaze up to the ceiling and muttered an old prayer for protection up to the heavens for Cobb, words overlapping, a few times so it stuck. Gunshots echoed to him as he flung himself against the door to his right. 

Eames was cuffed up to a dripping radiator in an otherwise bare room. Everything in Arthur’s head went away for a second, even Cobb. He moved to Eames and fell with each step to be level with him. As he landed, he took Eames’s worked over face in his hands and assessed the damage. 

“Darling,” Eames moaned, rough and cracking. His lips drew Arthur’s attention first. Those perfect, pillow soft lips were cut up and caked with dried blood. The sight almost brought Arthur to tears. He loved those lips. He hated everything about the situation and he loved Eames, body and soul, so much. The duelling feelings came to fruition in a broken slam of a kiss that tasted of rusty blood. Arthur pulled back, barely, and kept his forehead leaning onto Eames’s. Eames clutched the back of his neck and didn’t let go, either. 

“My knight in tailored slacks,” Eames croaked and Arthur’s heart thrashed in his chest because Eames was _so_ bloody, but he was still joking and that was enough to make Arthur’s eyes sting. 

“Just, shut up. I had to shoot some guy like a minute ago and I’m still working on processing that, so . . .” Arthur said as he fell back from Eames, a small bit, to get breathing room and to listen outside. Scary silence. The thought of parentless Phillipa and James stabbed him. 

“My poor Arthur,” Eames murmured, sounding like half of himself. It wrenched Arthur back to his compounding concern for Eames. Arthur grabbed at his hand, kissing dirty knuckles, before he started working a pin into the lock of the handcuffs. He looked up as he finished, intent to yank Eames up and out of the room and get to Cobb as soon as they could. But, Eames’s eyes were watering. Arthur’s breath caught in shock. 

“All . . . all I-I did in here was think about you. That’s all I ever do. M’ sorry ‘bout our fight. I-I miss you, so much,” Eames worked out and Arthur was taken aback to realize none of it was said in mocking. The words burned with utter seriousness. Arthur blinked and tiny, hot tears dribbled down his face. 

“Eames, _fuck_ ,” was all he managed before the door slammed open behind them. Arthur tugged up his pants to get at his gun, but the figure in the doorway was Cobb, broken nose and a ripped blazer that was clearly bullet-grazed. He shined bright in Arthur’s eyes. 

“I got the keys. Let’s go,” Cobb huffed. Arthur wanted to hug him but there was no time. He settled on a smile, wide and seeping gratitude. Cobb returned it with a small, tight grin, as his eyes glanced between Arthur and Eames. They got the hell out of there. 

On his first footfall outside of the building, bloodied and out of breath but with Eames and Cobb next to him, Arthur made the choice.

****

Arthur is trying very hard to get his question out. They’re still together- Arthur is not letting Eames out of his sight for a bit- and back at Arthur’s apartment, the one in San Marino that Eames has never been to before, the one that is the most Arthur of all of Arthur’s spaces. Eames is bandaged and still in bed, mobility low, as he waits with a smirk and carefully knitted fingers for whatever Arthur will say. 

“Ah, so, I think I’ve made it clear I have pretty strong feelings for you,” Arthur begins, too much breath caught in his chest. Eames’s grin stretches into his cheeks.

“Yes, love. The rescue routine was a dead give away.” 

Arthur shoots him a glare. 

“Let me get this out, okay?” he presses and Eames shrugs his concession. Arthur huffs and resteadies, “Alright. Eames, I . . . I’ve been thinking a lot about you and my life since you were taken and I’ve come to the conclusion that I much prefer it with you in it.”

“Quite sweet of you,” Eames chirps in. Arthur frowns and Eames settles back against the pillows, mouthing a ‘sorry’. 

“I don’t want to not see you for months anymore, or have you almost get killed while we’re not talking. I want us to be . . . be, uh, connected, somehow. I need that and-”

“My god. You really like me, huh?” Eames says, his nails itching in his stubble as he drives Arthur mad. 

“Fucking Christ, I’m trying to ask you to marry me!” Arthur spews in one large press of breath. After it’s out, he rubs angrily at his eyes, because that’s not exactly how he was intending to do this, to put it mildly. The room goes silent of Eames’s comments for a moment.

“Oh,” he says in a hush after too long. 

“Oh?” Arthur repeats. He’s gone red everywhere from mortification because he loves Eames with so much of him and if he rejects this, he’ll likely just crumble into nothingness. And it’s clicking him too late that this was very stupid and the last real, non-escape or Eames’s injuries related conversation they had was the one in Eames’s apartment where Eames couldn’t even confirm they were in a relationship. Arthur is suddenly aware of the uncertainty of the answer in a way he wished he had been earlier. 

Eames smiles at him and Arthur flushes. 

“You’re asking me to marry you and you don’t even have a ring. Good lord,” Eames chuckles, weakly compared to his usual laugh and Arthur raises his eyes up, little by little. 

“Um. Sorry. I thought it might be presumptuous,” he mumbles and looks at Eames in small doses. He’s red, too, and breathing heavy, but grinning under it all. 

“Fuck, Arthur, get over here,” Eames huffs and Arthur does, bounding over with relief Eames isn’t running. Once he’s in arms reach, Eames pulls him into his lap and presses him with a warm kiss. 

“Your stomach is all bruised, I shouldn’t-” Arthur says as he increases the gap between their bodies in caution. Eames shuts him up with another brash kiss. 

“I don’t care. I really don’t care. We’re getting married,” Eames rushes, so fast that Arthur takes a minute to comprehend. 

“Wait, so-”

“Sorry, Should have given you an answer sooner. Yes, Arthur, I’ll marry you,” Eames tells him with his biggest, cheesiest grin. Arthur goes rigid in shock. Some part of him had been still holding out for no, some part of him that was still undecided on Eames’s feelings. 

“I . . .” Arthur hesitates, and tries to think of the best thing to say now, as in now that he has a fiancé. He finds it, “I love you. I realized that a while ago, actually, but, well. I thought you should know.”

Eames smiles into the crevice of his neck and nibbles at the skin until Arthur squeaks. 

“God, I love you, too, bloody psycho,” he whispers against Arthur before he pulls up to look Arthur in the eyes. Arthur can read a hint of nerves in the look, but it is surrounded by eager joy, “Those five days, when they had me locked up, all I could keep thinking was that I actually goddamn loved you and how I’d be right mad if I died before I said it.”

Arthur chest tingles with warmth and anxiety as he thinks of Eames locked up and the process of getting him out. Eames is scarred and bruised, a painful souvenir of his time as hostage, and Arthur knows he can’t do it again. 

“We can’t take jobs like that. Nothing dangerous ever again. Promise me,” Arthur says, terrifyingly serious. Even two weeks ago, he can’t imagine having given that ultimatum. He can’t imagine agreeing to it himself. But maybe things actually do change, because he means it with all his certainty. Eames stares at him for a long while before he agrees.

“I promise,” Eames says tightly.

Arthur stops for a moment, takes a breath. He’s in Eames’s lap, the man who he is marrying, who just swore a life-altering promise to him, and all he can think is, what the hell?

“You’re actually marrying me, then?” Arthur checks. There must have been a miscommunication somewhere along the line. But Eames nods, looking pleased as punch. 

“That I am. Next thing you know, we’ll be getting joint bank accounts and deciding where to place our picket fence.”

“Anywhere you want,” Arthur tells him, because it’s true. He’d settle anywhere Eames is, has been for years, really, when he thinks about all their jobs together. 

“The vast tundra of the north it is, then,” Eames answers. 

“No,” Arthur shoots back.

He settles into the bed next to Eames, who probably has another few days of healing up before he’s really back to fine. Arthur has a nest egg large enough for them not to work for a while, and he’s decided he’d like to take Eames on a long honeymoon.

“I love you,” Arthur says again, because he can now, and then says it a few more times just so he can hear Eames say it back. 


	3. Epilogue

Arthur and Eames spend a few days following the proposal arguing back and forth on where they’d be getting married. 

“We could do Paris. I still feel awful about-” Eames offers over pizza. His wounds are still tender and fresh enough that he can’t cook, and Arthur doesn’t want to endure whatever mocking comments his own cooking will inspire. 

“No. I’ve had enough of Paris for a few years or so,” Arthur says, jaw tight, and Eames mumbles something quippy under his breath before he drops the subject. Paris is likely forever wrapped up with Arthur’s grief over Mal and living through the worst days of Cobb’s life with him. He’s ready to shelve the city for a while. 

“Did you like Spain?” Arthur asks the next afternoon. They’re sitting out on his balcony. Arthur’s reading a book his mom sent him an email about and Eames is sat across from him on his fourth cigarette of the day. The air is comfortable in a way that makes Arthur feel unsure and expectant for the worst, but he reminds himself that Eames has agreed to marry him and everything here is as it should be. Eames turns to him with a frown quirking up on his lips. 

“I’ve been to Spain too many times. I’ve tired of it,” Eames says and looks out over the landscape that lies in front of them, taking a drag. He smirks and smoke billows out of him with a chuckle, “also, I think there are some people in Madrid who still have hits out on me.”

Arthur rolls his eyes as he sets down his book. 

“Oh. I suppose I’ll be needing a list of where you’re a wanted man before I plan anything,” Arthur snarks. 

“Give me a day, love. There’s a lot to remember,” Eames says and Arthur wants to laugh and groan at the same time because he doubts Eames is lying. Well, Arthur will actually be wanting that list. He huffs and leans across the coffee table dividing them to kiss Eames, who hums into his touch. 

After three more suggestions tossed out, they agree upon Búzios, Brazil, which is hot enough even in late October to serve Arthur’s leanings to warmer climates and has no dangerous or emotionally heavy history for either of them. They’ve also decided on elopement, because neither of them have either a wealth of friends or the closeness with family to rationalize a full blown wedding. 

“We should have a witness, though, right?” Arthur suggests, even though he’s sure they could wrangle one up once they get to Búzios. Eames nods, soft and smiling. 

“Call Cobb up,” Eames tells Arthur without having to ask. Arthur doesn’t know if this speaks to Eames’s knowledge of him or his lack of close friendships, but of course he means Cobb, “It will be all cyclical if he’s there, considering he’s the one who introduced us.”

“Are you ever going to tell me how he found you?” Arthur asks, nudging on bitter. He’s always been something like jealous that Cobb and Eames share a knowledge he doesn’t, not to mention worried it’s something terrible they’re hiding. 

“A man has his secrets,” Eames says, though it’s light and teasing in a way that makes Arthur think he could find out if he pushed at it. He doesn’t, though, because unraveling Eames’s secrets has become a past time for him, one he wouldn’t mind maintaining. 

Arthur calls Cobb as he’s looking into officiants and marriage licenses and stressing over whether or not Eames has enough official documentation to make the ceremony legally binding, and starts the conversation with the question ‘Come to Brazil with me?’ surrounded by a nervous chuckle. 

“Arthur, fuck, I don’t care if all of Brazil is trying to kill Eames. I can’t keep-”

“No, ah. No, this isn’t like that. It’s not dangerous, or a job, or something,” Arthur cuts in quick at Cobb’s biting tone. Cobb stills for a hearty second. 

“Oh. What . . . what are we doing then?” he asks. Arthur holds in an inhale and stares at his computer screen, which currently holds one tab for the application process they’ll need to do with the  Brazilian Consulate and another for renting a villa on the coast. He sort of has no idea how to explain himself and shifts in his seat for another moment before he speaks. 

“I . . . I’m getting married?” Arthur says with a rough swallow. 

“To Eames?” Cobb scoffs, unbelieving, and Arthur takes a second to be offended before he remembers the insanity of all this. 

“Yeah. In six days, if you can make it,” Arthur tells him, as level as he can be. Cobb is silent until he breaks into a rough laugh. 

“Oh my God. In a week? Aren’t you supposed to give the guests a few months notice?” 

“Yeah. Well,” Arthur huffs, grinning despite himself, “I’m about to marry a man whose notably poor at circumspection. I’m trying to adjust to that. And you’re the only guest.”

Again Cobb laughs, and his laugh joys Arthur, as it has only recently reappeared after a long absence. 

“You sure about this?” Cobb asks once he settles. Arthur sighs. If the question is if he’s sure that he should be flying to a foreign country to marry someone who has about ten aliases barely over a week after proposing, then, no, maybe he isn’t. However, if Arthur can read the meaning under Cobb’s words like he thinks he can and the question is about whether he is ready to give himself over to Eames, for good and bad, and lay everything on the belief that it will work out, the answer is yes, yes, certainly yes. Loving Eames with all he has to give is one of his most steady constants.

“Completely,” Arthur states. His voice is firm and does not waver. 

Arthur books Cobb’s ticket once he agrees to come and pays personally for all three of them to fly first class. He’s alotting himself half of his Fisher payout for this trip and won’t be letting Cobb pay for a single thing. Cobb, at least from his view, is the reason this event can even happen, because Arthur knows he would not have Eames here and now and  _ alive _ without Cobb’s help. He’s rented a gigantic, fully stocked villa, reserved private sections of beach for them, and got them tables at the best restaurants. He’s even paid for Cobb to have a private snorkeling session at Ferradurinha Beach, mostly because of a job Arthur, Cobb, and Mal did in Cancun where they all took a liking to the activity, but also so he and Eames get the villa alone for a full four and a half hours. For once, riding on a delirium of love, incredible sex, and immense fufillment of his desires, Arthur forgets all he’s ever learned from growing up well-off and spends his money with reckless abandon. 

On a Friday afternoon, after Cobb is back home from picking Phillipa up from first grade and Eames has made Arthur come three times, a taxi stops at Cobb’s house to retrieve him. 

“Athuw!” James screeches at the opening of the door, his baby-like lisp lingering longer than Phillipa’s did, and Arthur crouches with open arms to take James’s running hug. 

“How’s my favorite little man today?” Arthur asks as he pulls back, though James is staunchly silent, his gaze focused up on Eames and eyes overcome with a fearful intensity. Arthur follows the stare. Eames is in the doorway, a smirk growing around the toothpick stuck in his teeth, and Arthur admits that his fiancé could have the potential to be unsettling to someone as little and weary as James. 

“Hello there,” Eames says in response to James’s stare, and James shrinks tight against Arthur. Eames and Arthur share a quick look and a breeze of a chuckle. Eames shrugs and leans back against the door frame. 

“James, this is my . . . my friend, Mr. Eames. You don’t have to be scared of him,” Arthur assures, though James seems less than trusting as he continues to examine Eames. Arthur shakes his head with a grin, “Do you know where your dad is?”

James nods and clutches tightly onto Arthur’s hand as he begins to lead him through the house. Eames keeps a few steps distance as they do. 

Cobb waits in the bedroom zipping up a messenger bag and holding his brown leather suitcase. James rushes in and Cobb crouches so James can whisper urgently to him. He grins as James does so and then looks over to Eames. 

“Scaring my children, Eames?” he asks. 

“Trying not to. Suppose I’m a bit intimidating,” Eames shrugs. 

“He’s not so bad, James. Most of the time,” Arthur says and smiles when Eames shoves against him. James mutters a quick request to go in his room until Grandma gets there and Cobb sends him off. 

“Let me say goodbye to Phillipa and then we can get you two lovebirds to the airport,” Cobb tells them with a wink, his joy infectious since he’s been home with his children, and leaves them alone. Once he’s gone, Eames’s arm snakes around Arthur’s waist and pulls them chest to chest. 

“I marry you in two days,” Eames murmurs and Arthur sighs warmily into a kiss that melts into sweetness in his gut. 

Their flight has one lay-over in Miami four hours in and then nine or so hours after that to  Búzios. As expensive and wasteful as it is, Arthur is glad to have splurged for first class once they’re on the longer of the two flights. His and Eames’s seats stretch out into a bed, one which they are laid out across after the in-flight meal, both a few drinks in. 

“What do you think of joining the mile high club?” Eames whispers, lips pressed right up to Arthur’s ear. It makes Arthur shiver down every vertebrae of his spine as he flushes, and he can’t deny that the thought is tempting him. He has to remind himself that the only thing separating them from the rest of first class is a divider that goes about an inch or two higher than their heads before he says yes. 

“Eames, please, we can’t-” Eames quiets him with a beautifully hot kiss to the hollow of Arthur’s neck. 

“I know, I know, but . . .” Eames eases and his fingers wrap around Arthur’s hip bone. Arthur sighs and doesn’t protest against Eames pulling back his collar to nip at his shoulder. Again, the urge to say screw it and get Eames’s belt buckle snapped open and pants unzipped, rules of decency be damned, overcomes him, but he hasn’t thrown every bit of sense and couth away. Arthur brings his hands between the two of them once he grows stiff and widens the distance between Eames’s tongue and his earlobe. 

“Let’s, uh, watch . . . in flight movie,” Arthur presses, breath tight in his throat. 

“Damn you,” Eames huffs, his growly voice not angry but enticed, and he hooks Arthur’s waist as he pulls them both into sitting up. 

“I’m not having sex on a  _ full capacity  _ flight. Sorry,” Arthur states, for both Eames and himself. Eames shakes his head.

“Jesus, love, you’re no fun,” he says with a grin and doesn’t remove his firm arm from around Arthur. Arthur rolls his eyes, scrolls through their options, selects a stoner comedy that he knows he can fall asleep to, and settles back into Eames. 

In five and a half hours, they will land at Umberto Modiano Airport. In something around forty hours, they will be married. 

Once they arrive and take a taxi with an odd, loud, aggressive driver to the villa, Cobb has the wherewithal to give the soon-to-be newlyweds the place alone. 

“I’m going to take a walk on the beach. About an hour long walk. I’ll knock when I come back,” Cobb grins at them, mostly to Arthur, who flushes. 

When Eames swings forward on the balls of his feet and asks if Cobb can make it two, Arthur slaps him across his arm immediately. Inside, though, after the long flight spent entirely up close next to Eames, Arthur is grateful for the privacy. His body bounds forward to Eames’s touch once they are alone, so desperately ready. 

“Not too jet lagged, love?” Eames checks, a teasing coyness to his words as he plays with the hem of Arthur’s shirt but takes no action to actually make a move. 

“No, just . . . just, c’mon,” Arthur huffs and tugs Eames’s hands to hold onto his hips. 

“Oh, I love when you get desperate,” Eames hums. He dips his head to lean it against Arthur’s collarbone and his breath tingles with expectation, flaring across Arthur’s skin. He chuckles. 

“Of course you do, goddamn pervert.”

“Oh, come off it. You love me.”

And, for everything, Arthur really does. Finally,  _ finally _ , Eames hits him with a kiss. Arthur thrums with the sensation and crushes Eames’s body against him. He’s unsure if it’s his exhausted brain going through a final burst of energy or the anticipation of tomorrow that is making him so eager, but this time feels different, feels like a moment to be remembered. 

The villa is large, with plenty of couches Arthur can throw Eames down onto and walls Eames can press Arthur flat against. They use most of it, grinding into each other in the kitchen, then the living room, and finally landing in their master bedroom, in a bed they can claim together. 

“Fucking hell, you’re beautiful,” Eames groans above Arthur as he braces his arms on the sides of Arthur’s head. 

“Don’t call me beautiful,” Arthur says, because it’s ridiculous and Arthur has never even considered categorizing himself as beautiful. He pulls a frown and Eames takes hold of his jaw, bringing his eyes back to him. 

“You are,” Eames insists, oddly serious. Arthur’s breath catches, and he thinks he might even believe it. He hooks Eames’s neck and pulls him down into a kiss, letting his tongue break through Eames’s lips as soon as he is given the chance. 

By the time they have gotten each other undressed, Arthur’s cock has gone so hard it hurts and he bucks with no shame against Eames. He wants Eames with even more fervor than he’s used to and Eames seems to be aware now, working quick and rough. Eames has had the lube ready on the nightstand for their whole time in this room and he squirts a thick globe of the stuff across his palm before he runs it in a few quick jerks across his dick. He jolts his hips down to Arthur’s ass, which Arthur has been ramming up to him in pathetically needy want for minutes. When Eames presses himself in, they both hiss and still for the briefest moments. But, Arthur can only take that for so long until he’s clawing at Eames’s back and clenching around him. 

“Hard, hard, please, fucking hard, I-”

Eames growls and rockets himself against Arthur. Arthur whines in reaction, eyes almost tearing with how fucking much he loves this, wants this forever and ever, till death do they part. 

Of the one or so hours Cobb has given for them to have the house to themselves, they take each other so aggressively, they end up only using about twenty minutes of it. Eames, with his eyes half-lidded and a yawn on his tongue, offers another round, but Arthur is spent enough to decline. He sleeps in the embrace of Eames’s chest hair; naked and covered with a sort of wonderful coating of sweat. 

The smell of frying onions and the sound of sizzling oil is there when they wake up, hours later. After a basic cleaning of themselves and the acquisition of some light clothes, they wander their way to the kitchen. 

“There’s a market about a thirty minute walk from here,” Cobb says as he flips a cut of skirt steak in a skillet, “Do you guys like fajitas? It’s the only way I can get the kids to eat vegetables.”

“I could have cooked,” Eames says, coming behind him to observe the progress of dinner. Arthur can read from the quirking of his brows alone that Eames is thinking through exactly how he could be making it better. Arthur rolls his eyes at him and he pulls back. 

“You were asleep and also, I assumed, naked when I came back, so I got a jumpstart on it,” Cobb fires back and Eames tosses his hands up in surrender. 

“Sorry, I’ll let you have at it, then. I’m cooking breakfast, though.” 

“Fine,” Cobb grins, and turns his attention back to the bell peppers. 

The dinner is good, even if not curse-word inducing like Eames’s dinners. They eat it on the front deck, which is right on the beach, and listen to the crash of the waves. The air stays a pleasant level of warm through the night and they stay out well into the evening, Cobb with his feet dug in the sand and Arthur and Eames sharing a sun lounger. Eames has both his arms wrapped around Arthur’s waist, which normally Arthur wouldn’t have around other people, but he is drunk off of both the beers Cobb bought them and the trip as a whole. They let Cobb talk on about Phillipa’s reading level and enrolling James in preschool and nod along softly here and there, the night slow and comfortable. 

“We could live here, you know. We could just stay here forever,” Eames whispers as the sun completely leaves the sky. Arthur considers for a second whether or not Eames was serious. He does like the warm climate and forever anywhere with Eames is good enough for him. Still, he shakes his head. 

“No, I still have eight months on my lease,” he sighs. 

“Bugger it all,” Eames mutters, his breath tickling hotly on Arthur’s ear. Arthur feels like this night will never end, sort of, but he knows it has to, because he’s getting married tomorrow. 

Eames does make them all breakfast when they wake; spicy sausages, runny eggs, and the freshest fruit Arthur has had in years. The ceremony won’t be until six, so they pack up the villa’s folding chairs and put on bathing suits to head out to the Praia do Forno beach. Eames and Cobb go out deep into the calm waters together while Arthur sits with his toes pushing around the red-twinged sand for an hour or two and letting himself feel the significance of the day. 

After a walk through the nearby town and a bag of cassava chips, they wander back to the villa for margaritas courtesy of Eames. 

“A toast to you two, the newlyweds!” Cobb cheers as he raises his glass. Arthur laughs as he clinks with Eames and Cobb. 

“We haven’t even gotten married yet.”

“Well, it’s preemptive well wishes, I guess” Cobb shrugs. 

“Jesus, how screwed do you think we are to need preemptive well wishes?” Eames smirks with furrowed brows at Cobb. Cobb narrows his eyes and does a few looks between Arthur and Eames. 

“Hm. You and Arthur? Pretty screwed, yeah.” 

Eames huffs a laugh and nods. 

“You may be right,” he agrees. Arthur shakes his head and checks his watch. It’s nearly a quarter until five; they should be getting dressed. He stands and claps his hands down on Eames’s shoulders. 

“We need to be getting ready.”

Eames rises and nods, turning to kiss Arthur’s cheek. Arthur leans into it, just a little, and takes a deep breath. Eames smells of lime, sunscreen, and his own unshakeable undercurrent of cigarettes and heat. 

Eames dresses first while Arthur lays back, ready to approve and edit. He’s already seen what Eames will be wearing when they packed but he needs to see how it looks on, because he will not have his husband wearing an ill fitting suit in pictures they’ll have forever. 

“Isn’t this some sort of bad luck?” Eames shouts from behind the bathroom door. 

“We aren’t following any other traditions. Technically, at least according to the Jewish faith, we should have been fasting for a full day before this. Don’t worry about it,” Arthur says. Eames comes into the room, black pants paired with a blue blazer that cinches under his chest in a way that makes Arthur’s breath catch. 

“Shit. That’s right. Do you want to do a Jewish ceremony, or something-” Eames says. 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Arthur cuts in, as he stares at Eames without blinking. There is no way this is reality, but he left his totem at home. If he’s under, he doesn’t want to find out, “You look incredible.”

“Do I?” Eames smirks with a glint of his teeth. 

“Don’t get a big head about it,” Arthur says, rolling his eyes and hoping it will break the spell. His stare flicks back and, no, it doesn’t. Arthur sighs, pulls himself off the bed, and slams a kiss to Eames’s lips. Arthur can feel his grin in it. 

Their officiant is set to meet them at a hotel near Ossos beach, which has a sun-lightened brick patio that overflows with flowers and vines where the ceremony will be held. As they walk through the doors of the hotel, Cobb hanging just behind them, Eames grips down hard on Arthur’s hand. 

“It’s not too late for you to run, darling,” he mutters with a breeze of a laugh so that only Arthur can hear. Arthur furrows his brows and scans his gaze across Eames’s face, finding real self-doubt there for the first time in their history. He grips Eames’s hand right back and shakes his head, lips a straight and certain line. 

“I’m not interested in running anywhere. Are you?” Arthur asks. Eames’s mouth fades into a smile. 

“Not at all.”

Their officiant, a local resident of the town in his mid-fifties with kind eyes and a constant smile, greets them all with hugs. 

“Okay, so, Arthur Cohen and Edgar Eames, yeah?” he checks. 

“Edgar?” Cobb laughs. 

“Shut up about it,” Eames says with a burning glare and a simmering smile. Cobb shrugs back with a grin. 

“You guys ready to get into it?” the officiant says, a happy bounce to his words as he claps his hands together. Arthur almost lets himself laugh at the casual swing of his words describing one of the most major events in Arthur’s life, but he contains himself to a brief ‘yes, we are’. 

The whole ceremony goes by in bursts, in tiny moments that will be tucked away in Arthur’s mind forever. The comfortable pressure of Eames’s hands held in his own, vows full of shared promises murmured back and forth, Cobb presenting them with the simple, etched silver rings they bought the day before they left, Eames’s eyes, Eames’s lips, his smile, his jaw, his stubble, the glow under his cheeks, all leading to, 

“You may now kiss.”

Eames grabs Arthur first and sighs into the kiss. Arthur’s knees dip the slightest bit. They are married and life is entirely surreal. There is paperwork to sign that Arthur barely registers, parting words with their officiant, and Cobb’s wide grin as he congratulates them, but Arthur doesn’t think he comes back to himself until they are sitting in the private room of the hotel restaurant, drinking champagne while Eames’s eyes burrow into Arthur.

“What?” Arthur says, when it’s been half a minute of being stared at. 

“I can't wait to take you to meet my mum,” he eases. Arthur stills, sort of shocked.

“Your mom?” Arthur checks, because Eames has only mentioned his family very briefly, never with any details, and Arthur began to assume Eames had no contact with any of them. Part of him started to view Eames as a family-less person who burst forth with a cigarette in his hands and smarmy accent. Eames nods.

“She’s gonna love you, she is. She will flip that you’re American, though,” Eames says. Arthur blinks at him before he huffs a small part of a laugh. 

“Fuck, I’m going to have to tell my parents. They are going to be so mad I didn’t invite them,” he chuckles, which spurs Eames, and suddenly they are both laughing so hard that Cobb tells them to shut the hell up. 

Arthur considers they might have rushed into this, but honestly he doesn’t care if they have. He doesn’t care if there is so much he doesn’t know about Eames, because he knows he can learn. Looking at Eames’s bright smile as he laughs, Arthur is so ready to learn all of his secrets, however long it takes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was a joy to write and I hope a joy to read. Please review! <3


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